Password Theft

Password Theft the Real Victims

The University of Michigan Law School presentation of the victims of password theft through the law review "Password Theft: Rethinking an Old Crime in a New Era" is a good representation of password theft occurring today intentionally or unintentionally. In today's society were a majority of Americans rely on the World Wide Web as their number one resource of information and correspondence it is unsurprising that the rate of password theft has been on the rise. The use of passwords on the internet is increasing daily to help provide security of personal information. Internet users find themselves using passwords for the basics such as email and messengers to chat with friends to the more important things such as online banking and credit card payments. With more and more passwords being used many people tend to use the same password for multiple applications. This continues use of the same password promotes password theft by once they know it they can get into many aspects of your life not only personally but financially as well. The law review "Password Theft" written by Daniel Shamah is a good representation of types of password thefts occurring and who are the victims. This paper studies how the University of Michigan Law School views the victims of password theft through three broader aspects of theft. Those three broader aspects represented in this law review are recognition, identification, and prevention.

The first aspect of theft to be discussed in the law review is the recognition of a theft having occurred. In order to recognize if a theft has taken place it is imperative to know the difference between the terms rivalrous and nonrivalrous. Rivalrous is a term used for a theft that is traditionally seen and understood as some type of theft that deprives a victim the use of whatever it is that was stolen. To better understand a rivalrous a general example is given in "Password Theft" when the review states, "So if John steals Frank's car, the theft is rivalrous because John has taken the car and deprived Frank of its usage" (p. 3). This quote shows that a theft has been committed by John. John has taken away from Frank his ability or choice to use the car. Non rivalrous is almost the opposite in general terms it means that it does not deprive the victim of any usage or rather a theft has not been committed. A non rivalrous example is also given in the law review stating, "If Tom tries to sell information, and Frank steals it, theoretically he is not depriving Tom of selling just as much information as before" (p. 3). This example seems somewhat confusing but does give a better understanding that non rivalrous does not cause depletion. In terms of who is the victim in the examples above in the case of rivalrous theft the victim is Frank.